


Visions

by Rhyo



Category: Angel: the Series, The Sentinel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 08:06:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhyo/pseuds/Rhyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn’t a crossover quite as much as a glancing collision between TS and Angel. Characters meet, talk, exchange visions and go their separate ways as fast as possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visions

**Author's Note:**

> A challenge drabble for Timian, who requested Cordelia/Blair. In TS it occurs right after Sen2P2. In Angel it happens right after they "fire" Angel. 
> 
> Written in mid-2004. Still slowly working my way through my own "back catalog" and picking some of my favorite stories to put back up on the web. I really enjoyed writing Cordelia. I have another crossover that involves Blair and Wolfram and Hart that I like but haven't found yet. I'll post that one when I figure out where it is....
> 
> .

It was early afternoon and the café wasn't particularly crowded; Blair sat at an outside table in the sun, sipping ice water and picking at his sushi and pickled cucumber salad. The late spring southern California sun was warm and he turned his face up into it, waiting for the benediction of warmth and peace that never came.

With a sigh, he went back to picking at his food. This was the reason he had gotten off of the plane in Los Angeles and deliberately slipped away from Megan instead of getting on the plane bound for Cascade. He couldn't go back and face Jim and the loft, cleared of all his possessions, not in this mood.

He didn't have a lot of enthusiasm for the food and felt vaguely guilty about it. He should have been glad to be alive, glad to have been pulled out of the fountain, glad to have experienced a spiritual miracle, even if it had been worked by Jim in the depths of his grief and guilt. 

Instead, he felt angry and resentful. In Sierra Verde he had been useless to Jim -- worse than useless, Jim had felt more comfortable turning to his dead shaman and guide for help. When he had time to ask for help, in between kissing the very woman who had hit Blair on the back of the head and held him under the water to drown and ditching Blair and Megan in the depths of the cool mountain rain forest.

He heard voices and looked up to see three people take a seat at a nearby table. A black man, fit and well-muscled, with a slight swagger and more than a little attitude, a taller man, thin, with a serious face and glasses, and a gorgeous younger woman.

If he'd been Jim, he could have eavesdropped on their conversation, but he figured that it was for the best he couldn't hear them - he had enough problems without taking on someone else's. He could easily read the tension in body language and posture to tell that whatever they had come to discuss, it wasn't happy.

There was hint of sorrow in all three faces, and more than a little anger. The woman smoothed a hand over her long dark hair and Blair watched her summon up a smile and fix it on her face, as though she could smile all three of them out of whatever problem they had.

Watching the controlled misery at the table only served to remind him of his own, and he stood up, pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, finding the appropriate bills and throwing them on the table.

He turned to leave and walked directly into the woman who had risen from her own table at the same time.

He reached out to steady her. "I'm so sorry,..." he started. 

She smiled at him, a full, real smile on her face, showing what a shadow the earlier smile had been. She opened her mouth to speak, but when he touched her, he saw a shadow ripple across her face and her eyes rolled back in her head. He barely managed to catch her before she hit the ground, but it took him to his knees with her.

Distantly he heard her companions get up from the table, but as he touched the side of her face he was instantly transported from the gentle spring day into an inferno of pain and terror, set in darkest night. There were shapes and screams, somehow-familiar images of water and concrete and stone and people, and then he felt incredible pain as his entire body seized and he blacked out.

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * 

 

He was lying on a sofa in a dim room, and there was no part of his body that didn't hurt. Above him, a face swam in and out of focus and finally resolved into the woman with the incredible smile.

"Hi," the smile said. "I'm Cordelia."

"Blair," he said and groaned as the slight movement of his head caused intense pain. "Blair Sandburg."

"Wow," she said, smiling at him. "And I thought I got them bad." She had a damp, cold cloth that she wiped across his forehead with more enthusiasm than skill. The icy liquid trickled down his temple and behind his ear and he shivered. "At least no one gets ripped apart in yours." 

He reached up and stopped her hand. "Had what bad?"

"Visions. From The Powers."

"Visions?"

"Yeah. You had a Vision. Big time. About a fountain, and a man that was really upset, and some cute animals, and then some really weird stuff with underground hot tubs."

"The fountain," he murmured and closed his eyes, as the vision replayed, only this time he was Jim in the vision. Jim, the man who lashed out in anger at his friend and guide, loved and trusted above all others and yet pushed away in fear and confusion. He was Jim on the steps of Hargrove Hall when he felt instinct push him to turn and look at the fountain and the body floating in it. He was Jim on the lawn, frantically, futilely, trying CPR and crying out to heaven -- to anyone -- for help. He felt the spirit merge again, the soul-deep adrenaline rush and sense of connection, of destiny -- and then he felt the horrible, dark attraction to the other sentinel, to control her, to mate with her, to test his will and dominance against her. He felt what Jim felt, saw what Jim saw in his visions in the temple: death and destruction and the one shining light, the beacon in darkness...

He moaned and shivered and Cordelia mopped ineffectually at his forehead again.

"So, what are you?"

"What am I?" He felt remarkably unintelligent, repeating her questions like this, but even though she was speaking English, using common English words, he knew he was failing to catch her actual meanings.

"Yeah, you know -- demon, vampire, slimy creature from the pits of hell, masquerading as human -- that kind of thing."

"Dem--" he started to repeat, and then clamped his mouth shut. "Umm, how about none of the above?"

She smiled again, that high-wattage smile, that made him forget she had just been discussing demons and vampires with every sign that she was serious. "That's good to know. Otherwise we'd have to stake you. Or something."

A cool, accented voice came from the doorway. "It'll probably have to be the 'or something'. He's a shaman."

"That's Wesley," Cordelia said. "He's the new boss."

Blair turned his aching head to see the tall, thin man that had been with Cordelia at the café standing in the doorway, holding a piece of paper and a vial.

"I'm not a shaman," Blair said.

"Shall we see?" Wesley dusted the paper with the power from the vial, shook the powder off and then dropped the paper on Blair's chest.

Blair sat up with a shout as he felt a burning pain across his body. It was the worst on his left arm, and he rolled back his shirt sleeve and gasped in surprise. There, looking as they had the day they had been left, were Incacha's bloody fingerprints, slightly smeared but fresh.

"Shaman." Wesley said. "Touched by great power."

"Yeah," Blair said. "Touched by it. That was about it."

Wesley shook his head. "No, the power is there. In you. Strong enough that when you touched Cordelia, who is a frequent conduit for shamanic visions from The Powers, you inflicted a vision on her."

"Sorry," Blair said, turning to her in apology. The vision had shaken and frightened him, what must it have done to her?

"Oh, no, really. It was nothing. No one died in yours. It had a happy ending, almost. Much better than the usual for me, just a little headache left over. You've been out almost the whole day."

Blair blinked at her and turned back to Wesley. "How do I get rid of it?"

It was Wesley's turn to be surprised. "Get rid of it? You don't. It's what you are -- what you have probably always been."

"You implied that a shaman had to be destroyed."

"Oh, that. Well, we don't meet a lot of good shaman, in our line of work."

"No, hardly ever," Cordelia agreed. "You'll be the first, in fact. Assuming you are good."

Blair rubbed his head. These people confused the heck out of him, with their casual acceptance of fantastic things. "I need to get home -- to Cascade."

"That would probably be for the best," Wesley said. "Cascade is a long way from here and you might be out of reach there."

"Out of reach of what?"

"Let's just say that if any lawyers come visiting you, it would be wise if you didn't take them up on their offer. Is there someone you need to call?"

"No, I have an open ticket for Cascade, in my backpack..."

"Excellent," Wesley said briskly. "Gunn can drive you to the airport."

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

 

As the jet climbed out of the LA basin, Blair looked out the window and wondered if he had just imagined the last day. It had a surreal quality that rivaled anything that had happened in Sierra Verde. 

Maybe he'd been wrong -- maybe he wasn't ready for the water, the way he'd told Jim he was. Maybe Jim was right, and the longer they put off that step into the mysterious, the better.

His left arm throbbed with that thought and he absently rubbed the five aching marks.

Maybe the water was ready for him.


End file.
